OpenGL to render web pages?

[Kizzume]

I've asked on a few message boards that deal with the available browsers this question and have pretty much gotten NO response:

Are there any plans to implement using either direct3d or opengl to display web pages? Currently, things like alpha layering bring some pages to a crawl, and making calls to move things on the screen in javascript look just as "smooth" as they did in Windows 95 days, nasty tearing and the whole works. And if you fill the screen with alpha layers, you can watch the cpu usage skyrocket, and it just seems really silly, considering that the ability to do that flawlessly in games has be there since 1997.

I just wonder why there's no focus on this. I know that whatever browser is the first one to do this will probably be the browser that will make it to the top of the market. There are so many websites that REALLY slow down under current browsers--any browser that can view pretty much all the sites without slowing down is going to be a winner.

[jq]

I'd help if I could but I have no idea what you are saying.

[Kizzume]

This kind of thing, but it's not making the whole desktop 3d, just the browser.

If you go to kizzume.com for instance, you'll notice that the page slows down the computer. This is because of the way that browsers currently handle semi-transparent images.

The colorful background of this forum--you're looking at 4 layers of graphics put on top of each other. That's why the background picture doesn't take forever to load, because I'm sort-of cheating to create this image. The red fade from left to right is a tiled picture that is only 1 pixel tall. The yellow fade from top to bottom is a tiled picture that is only 1 pixel wide. "Tiled" means that the picture is looped over and over again until it fills the desired area.

The way that current browsers handle these types of images is VERY inefficient right now. That's why just diplaying a whole page that has semi-transparent images actually slows down the computer. Games handle those types of graphics completely differently--much more efficiently--mostly because games use the processor in the graphics card to display the images and the games are written to take advantage of that. Web browsers use the main processor to handle all the graphics, the same way that XP handles moving around windows.

Do this test, if you have XP: Open up the task manager (ctrl alt delete OR ctrl shift esc) and click the performance tab. Now open a window--any window--and move it all over the screen and watch the performance bar jump WAY up just to do something as simple as moving around that window. Web browsers currently use THAT SAME method for displaying graphics.

If web browsers were to switch the way graphics are displayed over to using the graphics card to display them, like most 3d games do, there wouldn't be a page you could load currently that would bog down the computer. You could go to all those crappily-modded tricked-out myspace pages without the slightest flinch.

If they were able to display the graphics that way, they might be able to add something more like that video you see at the top of this response. Note the way that whatever window is in front will stick out the most when viewing it from a different angle. If you could do something like that on a web page, you could see all the individual layers that make up the page when you view it from a differnet angle. This could be of great benefit to web designers, as one could see exactly where a graphic layer went if they didn't code something correctly and a layer was sent behind other layers.